


First Love and Hate

by the_crazyones



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:33:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_crazyones/pseuds/the_crazyones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Momoi would always choose Dai-chan over anything in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Love and Hate

Momoi never told this to anyone, least of all Dai-chan, but she used to hate basketball so much - it filled her entire being with impassioned loathing.

It was not anything to do with the sport at all. No, if anything, the game was beautiful - the mesmerising sounds of the thuds and thumps as the ball bounced, the sheer agility of the players practically dancing around the court, the graceful arcs of the ball as it flew into the basket, drawing cheers and screams from the players...

No, she was pretty sure she would have fallen in love with it just as intensely as Dai-chan did...if her first exposure to the sport hadn't been from witnessing him happily bounce a second-hand ball the Nii-chan from the house opposite theirs had given to him.

Dai-chan embodied everything she loved about the sport, and he was so talented in it too. In just two weeks of having picked up basketball on his own, he could already dribble the ball with certainty, the certainty that brought about the beautiful thuds from each bounce. But it wasn't because she was jealous of him...at the age of 6, she hadn't seen all the flaws of Dai-chan that make her world-weary now. At that age, Momoi adored Dai-chan and thought him the most interesting, special, funniest person in the world.

It was because she couldn't join him in it. The more he revelled in his talent, the more she hated basketball. It diverted his attention away from her. It used to be, "Satsuki, Satsuki! Let's make a tree-house at the back of Auntie Mako's house! She says we can, I asked her yesterday!". When he discovered basketball, it became, "Satsuki! Watch me do this! Watch me do that!" His communal "let's" had morphed into "me". This mutation epitomised her worst fear at the time...the fear that he would no longer find her as interesting as she found him.

And so, she did what every confused 6-year-old would do...and decided to abandon him first before he abandoned her. In hindsight, this was a really foolish thing to do, because Dai-chan was so carefree and so oblivious, he totally didn't realise it.

"Oh, you can't watch me because you have to continue that tree-house we started? That's cool."

"You have to feed that crayfish I caught last time? Alright then!"

"You're going to play tag on your own? That's weird, but okay!"

It got so bad that she practically told him outright that she didn't want to watch him...but he, as usual, had misunderstood.

"You don't want to watch me because it's boring for you and you want to join in? Uh...okay, but I don't know how you can join in if you can barely dribble the ball even once...ah, I know! I'll shoot the ball in different poses, then it'll be so much fun for you to watch!"

And thus, Momoi helped create Dai-chan's famous formless shots. It irked her even more when his shots were so natural, the graceful arcs she admired so much in basketball somehow became more beautiful and fluid than when she first imagined them to be.

However, after half a year of struggle, Momoi realised that if she didn't want to lose her best friend, she had to do something. Preferrably something to do with basketball, so that he wouldn't get so far ahead with basketball that he left her behind. (Please, don't, Dai-chan.) She cared about him so much she didn't want their worlds to diverge...she would do anything for that not to happen, even if it meant liking stupid basketball.

And so she did what she was already talented in at 6 years old, and read up all about basketball. She spent nights under the blanket with a torch just researching the sport, learning all the famous basketball players, and their stats, and their skills. She innately knew that if she wanted to keep up with Dai-chan's prodigious talent in the sport, she had to know even more about it...and in a different way. To find a place within Dai-chan's world of basketball, she had to find a niche...and that niche was the polar opposite of Dai-chan's natural instinct for it.

That's when Momoi came to realise that her so-called "hatred" for the game wasn't hatred at all.

And so Momoi discovered her first love...it was basketball, but it was Dai-chan too...both were interlinked so closely she couldn't tell which came before the other. But if she had to choose, it would be Dai-chan any day, because it was Dai-chan who made her realise that she hated something she had loved from the beginning, all because she didn't want to lose him. And it was Dai-chan who ended up turning around that hate into its true nature, love, all because of his sheer talent in it.

And this is why she would never abandon him now, even if he strayed from his pure love for basketball into purely mechanical instincts. Because she had to return the favour he had so superbly done for her all those years ago, and because he would always be more important than basketball, or anything else, to her.


End file.
